


What Did You Expect?

by frickincheng



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Dark, Fugue Feast, Gen, High Chaos (Dishonored), High Chaos Corvo Attano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 05:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5772721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frickincheng/pseuds/frickincheng
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Lord Protectorate might not work during the Fugue Feast, but In the dying city of Dunwall, Corvo Attano's work is never over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Did You Expect?

For once the streets were filled, the emptiness gone with people creeping out from their hidey-holes as if one night of debauchery would protect them from the plague.  Shouts and laughter ran down normally silent streets, but there was an edge of desperation to it, a defensiveness, the population staring down the fate they knew awaited them and pretending they weren’t scared.  

It was traditional to wear masks during the Fugue and as he looked over the crowd he saw most had obliged to this practicality. A swirling riot of colors, some as bright as the plumage of exotic birds, jewels winking out like bright unseeing eyes, and others as simple as a bit of cloth across the eyes.  

Corvo’s mask was different, but as he pushed through the crowd, it hardly earned more than a glance or two, perhaps because of his clear Serkonan features.  The night’s breeze was cool, damp against his bare cheeks, and he sucked in a deep breath, tasting rain and the smog of burnt oil on his tongue.  The metal face of the Masked Felon is gone, assassin, protectorate, merely leaving Corvo Attano, a man that next to none knew and even fewer cared for.  For this night, he could be free as well, weaving through the drunken crowds, his mind clear as he looked over Emily’s city.  

But he can only take the press of the crowds and their forced merriment for so long before he ducks into a smaller alleyway, dark and cool.  The brick is wet against his back and his hair, and he leans against it, sucking breath after breath, hands flat against the stone.  

His solitude is shattered all too soon.  A man stumbles to the mouth of the alleyway, _big_ , towering over Corvo, hard brutal hands clenching and unclenching by his sides. His steps sway and the reek of whiskey burns the air between them as he leans in far too close.

“Good coat.”  He growls, slurring and Corvo feels the prick of a knife at his belly.   “Purse should be full.”  

_Bottle Street gang._ One of the runes under Corvo’s shirt throbbed, beating with a pulse akin to his own heart.   _Angry._ But the death of a leader could hardly spell the death of an organization like this.  

_What did you expect?  Respect?_ **_Grief?_ **

“ _Purse_.”  That big hand is around his jaw now and Corvo feels nails cut into his skin, the strength of the fingers bruising, mashing flesh to bone, and there’s the thrill of pain as the knife pushes past the cloth of his shirt, easing into flesh.  

Corvo kills him because he’s a blight on her city.  He grew up from the festering rot the plague brought and then feasted in turn on the remaining citizens, sowing more chaos, more discord to a place already despairing.  

Corvo’s hand flashes, his own blade sinking to the hilt deep into the man’s thick neck.  The thug doesn’t even get a chance to shout, to scream before the knife tears into his voice box.  He falls, gouting blood, a bright arterial spray that coats Corvo’s hands, spatters over his face.   He feels the trickle of his own blood down his belly.  The knife had barely pushed an inch in, little more than a scratch.  

The Lord Protectorate looks down at the cooling corpse, and with a precise gesture, reaches down to his purse.  The thug was right, it was heavy with coin, and with an almost ceremonial gesture, Corvo undoes it and pours the lot of it on the dead man, tossing the empty bag away.  He wipes off his face and hands as best he could before leaving the alley way, sliding back into the roaring crowd.

+++

Time crawls by, unending and impossible to track, but it’s in a different part of the city, closer to the districts where the wealthy live when an overseer finds him.  The coat he wears is unmistakable and even though there’s no mask Corvo can the see the zealtory lurking in the corners, not completely obscured by the drink fogging his gaze.  

It’s not at all like the thug, the hand that skims over his stubbled jaw is gentle and inquiring at the red marks that mar Corvo’s skin.  But there’s no hiding the hunger in his gaze, the flush of his skin, visibly sweating despite the coolness of the night.  A fevered state the speaks to more than just alcohol.   He’s insistent with his touches, despite Corvo shrugging them off over and over.  

When there’s a mouth on his own, he simply sighs, and lets it wash over him, the taste of excess, whiskey and a faint chemical tang, smoke lingering in the man’s hair.  The hand on the back of his neck is a little more like the thug’s now, harsh, insistent, pinning at his nape.  

Corvo kills him because of his hypocrisy.  Hiding behind a mask, claiming piety while serving a man who had grasped at any chance of power to excuse his own hedonism.  A man who destroyed the truly righteous, while trumpeting his own authority.  

The thin blade at his wrist slipped between ribs, punching past flesh, piercing a still beating heart.  Corvo felt the hilt jump against his palm just once, free hand leaping up to cover the man’s mouth, pushing him back through the crowd in a parody of a lover’s embrace, watching as his skin paled, the blood drenching his front hidden by his dark coat.  Once safely in a dark corner, pushed against a wall, did Corvo let his hand drop, and give the overseer what he wanted. He ran his fingers through dark hair, petted at cooling skin and kissed slack lips, soft and gentle, lavishing the overseer with the touch he was denied the rest of the year.  

The body leaves a long, crimson smear down the brick wall, a stain ignored and unseen by the rest of the revelers.  

+++

The woman is a noble, he decides, she has to be.  The cut of her dress is rich and fine and there’s two officers of the watch twined around her. One pouring wine down her throat, the other with his hand hunting under her dress.  She laughs, shivering, arching against both their bodies, blonde head tossed back.

He kills the men because they’re men of the watch, men who blindly listened to any orders filtered down to them, unquestioning. He kills her because she was a noble, nobles who turned their backs to the empress  in favor of the next power of another pair of coattails to grab on to.  A noble who merely wanted to further their own means, who knew nothing of _service._

A bolt pierces the first man’s eye, the second man’s temple.  It catches the woman in the throat before she could scream.  She falls back, writhing, hands clawing over the bolt, lily-pale hands stained red.  Corvo stands, waiting until she stills, watching the spreading pool of blood surround her.  

+++

The woman is a common one.  She isn’t pretty, rather plain.  Her laughter though is loud, infectious, the sound of simple, common delight.  She runs pass him, turning back, fingers waving in a simple greeting, the transient brush of strangers.  Corvo smiles for her.  

He can’t find the reason why he kills her.  


End file.
